Thank Paul McCartney for the Rush Reunion

Moving pictures have revealed that Rush’s holy-shit-it’s-happening reunion tour will begin next month, with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson reversing their earlier stance on reunions in order to appropriately honor their bandmate Neil Peart, who died in 2020 of brain cancer. “In the back of my mind and in the back of my heart, it’s felt like unfinished business, like we owed him a proper thank you and a celebration,” Lee now told the New York Times about their decision to tour. “Not a morbid, funereal type of thing. We want to celebrate the wonderful music the three of us spent almost 50 years writing together.”

Yet it was the presence of another person — a Tom Sawyer–type figure, let’s say — who helped get the ball rolling for the duo to realize that. Lifeson said that a chance meeting with Paul McCartney during a tribute concert for Taylor Hawkins back in 2022 was the instigator. Macca urged them to return to the road and get over their mean, mean pride. “Never argue with a Beatle,” Lifeson said. Lee previously told Rolling Stone of the impact of the encounter with McCartney, who gave them advice despite having little knowledge of Rush’s music. “He came and sat and drank with us. We all got plastered together,” Lee recalled. “He was lecturing Alex about how great it is to tour. ‘You have to do it, man. You have to get back out there, man.’” Now if only these men were around for it.